Rick Perry's Gardasil problem

I've noticed that "conservative" news sources seem to be touting Rick Perry for president. What's strange: Just a couple of days before, I ran across a story about his ties to the drug company Merck . . . and how, it appears, he abused his power as governor of Texas to attempt to grant Merck a tremendous boon, in terms of sales, at the awful expense of the people of Texas, whose interests you would hope he would have held of highest importance.

Considering that background story, and considering how it appears the U.S. government is already controlled, to too great an extent, by Big Pharma and Corporate Agriculture interests--both of which might reasonably be shown to be contributing to the destruction of Americans' and, in fact, almost all humans' health--I wonder: do we really want a Rick Perry kind of person representing us as president?

I first ran across this story in a poorly-researched--or, at least, horribly worded!--article by Christina Luisa in NaturalNews.com.

In February of 2007, [Rick Perry,] the governor of Texas[,] issued an executive order that bypassed the will of the Texas people and the entire legislature, mandating the vaccination of young girls -- in Grade 6 in Texas -- with the HPV vaccine Gardasil.

Merck, the pharmaceutical company in charge of the . . . venture and the chief distributor of the vaccine, was the same drug company that was reported to have given thousands of dollars to Perry's campaign efforts.

The vaccine was given FDA approval in June 2006 then rushed to the market without proper testing through clinical trials. . . . Only 8 months later Gov. Perry signed the executive order mandating this vaccine to all young girls (and later young boys). . . .

Although there are over 25 million people in the state of Texas, as a justification for his actions, Perry reported that there were . . . 391 deaths of women by cervical cancer -- [none of which deaths had] been proven to be caused by the HPV virus to begin with. . . .

[O]nly four months after Perry signed his order for mandated Gardasil vaccines, there were 13 cases of adverse vaccine reactions reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System [VAERS] database. There were thousands more negative reactions reported that were never touched by the mainstream media. By this alone, Rick Perry should have dismantled his executive order - but did he? Certainly not. . . .

I think Ms Luisa's heart is in the right place, but as numerous other sources have noted,

Just six weeks after Perry put pen to paper, the Texas House rebuked him on March 14, 2007, passing HB 1098, overturning his executive order by a vote of 119-21. The Senate followed suit the following month by a vote of 30-1.

Realizing both chambers had large enough majorities to override a veto, Perry opted to let the bill [overturning his order] become law without his signature. On May 8, the day the law went into effect, Perry held a press conference surrounded by women touched by cervical cancer. He bemoaned the tenor of a debate that he asserted had been "hijacked by politics and posturing," and blamed future cervical cancer deaths on those who opposed his mandate -- many of whom were fellow Republicans.

So I'm not sure why Luisa talks about Perry failing to dismantle his executive order.

But, nonetheless, there is a serious story here. And I'm led to wonder: Do we want a man to serve as president who is so willing to permit special interest groups like Merck to bully hundreds of thousands of people to use their children as guinea pigs for expensive medical experiments (Gardasil required/requires a series of three shots, each costing approximately $120!) . . . and then attempt to turn the tables on those who call him for his bad judgment by suggesting that they lack compassion for women and girls:

On May 8, the day the law went into effect, Perry held a press conference surrounded by women touched by cervical cancer. He bemoaned the tenor of a debate that he asserted had been "hijacked by politics and posturing," and blamed future cervical cancer deaths on those who opposed his mandate -- many of whom were fellow Republicans.

In a grand flourish, Perry thanked the small minority of legislators who sided with him: "They will never have to think twice about whether they did the right thing. No lost lives will occupy the confines of their conscience, sacrificed on the altar of political expediency."

In response, the sponsor of HB 1098, Republican state Rep. Dennis Bonnen, [said,] "Just because you don't want to offer up 165,000 11-year-old girls to be Merck's study group doesn't mean you don't care about women's health, doesn't mean you don't care about young girls." . . .

And, in fact, two years later the National Vaccine Information Center issued a report raising serious questions over the harmful side effects of the drug. A few months after that, an editorial on Gardasil in the Journal of the American Medical Association declared that "serious questions regarding the overall effectiveness of the vaccine" needed to be answered and that more long-term studies were called for.

But perhaps we should ignore these concerns. Perry had it on good authority that the vaccine was wonderful. After all,

his former chief of staff was a lobbyist for Merck and . . . his chief of staff's mother-in-law, Rep. Dianne White Delisi, was the state director of an advocacy group bankrolled by Merck to push legislatures across the country to put forward bills mandating the Gardasil vaccine for preteen girls.

Shouldn't he be able to trust such people to give him the real scoop on the efficacy of Merck's drugs?